14 DAY TRIAL // Michael Buford of Headlight Software Inc. has shared download figures for two of his company’s free applications – Knife Dancing for the iPhone and Heads Up: Hold'em HD for the iPad. Based on the downloads, he quantified that the iPad App Store was about 5% as big as the iPhone App Store on the day before the iPhone 3G launched. In related news, a Distimo report reveals that the number of iPad applications has hit 4,870 since the tablet’s debut on April 3rd – up 32.7% over the last two weeks.
AppleInsider picked up on the story after spotting a blog post by Buford who revealed on Friday that his Knife Dancing app was the No. 1 free iPhone game in February, with approximately 165,000 downloads in a single day. His company’s Heads Up app became the No. 1 iPad game on Thursday, with some 8,300 downloads in one day.
"So according to those numbers, for a free game the iPad app store is about 5% as big as the iPhone app store on the day before the 3G launch..." he wrote. "And unlike the iPhone, where the #1 game is usually the #1 app--on the iPad it only got us to #4."
AppleInsider also points out that metrics firm Distimo revealed earlier this month that the iPad App Store held at the time some 4,870 applications. The number may well be of 5,000 now, with the report having been released almost a week ago.
However, Distimo’s latest report focuses on the entire Apple App Store, which includes both the iPhone and the iPad. Its findings, limited to the Unites States, are:
- The number of applications in the Apple App Store for iPad has grown to 4,870 since the release of the iPad on April 3rd. In the last two weeks alone, the number of iPad applications has grown by 32.7%. - The largest application category on the iPad is Games with 1,577 titles (32%), followed by Entertainment and Books with 455 and 396 titles, respectively. - Of the 186,414 applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone, 73% are paid, while 80% of the 4,870 applications in the Apple App Store for iPad are paid. - An application in the Apple App Store for iPhone costs $3.82 on average, as opposed to $4.67 in the Apple App Store for iPad. - On the Apple App Store for iPad, Medical and Finance applications are the most expensive at $42.11 and $18.48 on average, respectively. This is significantly more than the average price for applications in these categories on the Apple App Store for iPhone ($10.74 and $5.74).